THE Federal government through the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaachi revealed recently, the plan to privatize four airports in the county, to guarantee efficiency, good management and continuous development of relevant infrastructure in the sector.

Breaking this news, Amaechi said, “As a result of limited resources for capital projects development, government is exploring the possibility of private sector participation to towards the realization of the industries’ potentials”.

He reiterated that the exercise would result in private sector participation in airports development to ensure good service delivery.

Although, Amaechi did not disclose the airports that would be concessioned or privatised, there are indications that the Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos, the Nnamdi Azikiwe International, Abuja, the Port-Harcourt International Airport and the Mallam Aminu Kano are the aerodromes slated for this exercise.

Reacting to this move, the Director and Training Coordinator of Aero-consult, Captain Dele Ore stated that, “Whether it is concession or getting people to manage the airports, it is still a form of privatization which ever way, there is still no other way for us to go. Eccept if we want to remain in one spot”.

Speaking with The Guardian on phone, he noted that this has been his campaign since the regime of the former Minister of Aviation, Babatunde Omotoba, “then I was the chairman of airport concessioning committee and we went every length, we took our example from all over the world, from Cairo, South Africa and others. We made our reports on that and up till today nothing was done about the reports that we submitted”.
“So lets us do it now that we have the resource. All over the world, private individuals manage airports; the government does not have any business, running airports anywhere in the world”.

“Instead of dabbling into the running of airports, government should concentrate on the building of healthcare, facilities, repair bad roads, improve on agriculture, power, construct more school and technology must be taken care of, otherwise we cannot make any progress”, he added.

According to him: ‘the minister is going in the right direction, I am in support of that, but what happens to the other airports that are not vibrant? So what do we do with the remaining 18 airports?
“I think the government should find a way of grouping them together into say four groups to make them viable”, Ore advised.

In his own contribution, an aviation expert and Head, Research, Zenith Travels, Mr. Olumide Ohunayo said that the recent announcement by the Minister on the privatisation of some airports in the country is hasty and may be counter-productive.

He said: “We are all aware that the remodeling process has gulped a lot of money that has consequently sent the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) to the abyss of debt. The debt should be warehoused by the ministry for now while they also initiate a process of verifying the quality and cost of the remodeling contracts with the hindsight that the contracts and approvals were shrouded in secrecy”.

“The Chinese loans for the new international terminals can be excluded from this process. The question boggling our mind is why the rush to privatise some airports just a few months after turning down the same advice in the Orosanye Report? Is the government looking for quick cash to reduce the over N150b debt generated from the remodeling process? Can the privatisation of four viable airports out of about 18 be the solution to indebtedness and inefficiency?”

Continuing he said, “FAAN needs help as an organisation, her problems goes beyond budgetary allocation from the Federal Government because the organisation itself lacks transparency; it has not been able to convince reputable investors. The non-availability of a verifiable financial statement over the years, frequent changes in management and leadership in the supervising ministry are other contributory factors”.

“If we insist on privatisation then we should consider the clustering option whereby a major airport will be taken along with other unviable airports within the zone. This will reduce FAAN’s liability while they concentrate on regulating, monitoring and securing the airports. Clustering takes the airport in totality rather than the cherry picking option”.

He further said that, “The Argentines took the 30 airports in totality using funds from the viable to support the unviable ones; the Indians divided the airports into green field and brown field before privatising. To protect the public, airlines and other airport users, the Indian government established an independent regulatory body to monitor and regulate the public and private airports.

“This will ensure compliance to benchmark service level and generally resist any form of monopolistic tendency. They also set up a scheme called “Viability Gap funding”, to protect, attract and support investors for Non- Viable airports. The government provides funds, which can only be accessed by interested investors through a bidding process.
“Also, the government ensured states where these airports are located are not left out by providing an additional state support agreement to boost the confidence of investors, while also wielding a stick called “Liquidated Damages,” which are charged for defaults. These countries took the airport in totality, the common factor in these agreements are capital injection, improvement of airport facilities, financial returns to government annually, protection of public interest and other operators.

“The UK experience of privatising worked well in a matured political society after being a regulated environment for decades. In less developed countries like ours, governments should be tilting towards building and enhancing the transport system rather than just offloading the assets. This is to avoid a situation whereby we move from ugly state-owned airports to even uglier privately owned airports. It is noteworthy that most reputable private sector investors would not consider buying an airport with fewer than one million passengers.

“This is why airports have often been sold as a package – good and bad, small and large, domestic and international. In achieving the objective, the government should as a first step invite reputable international airport management companies, who will often achieve what governments can no longer take care of – improvements in capacity, efficiency and safety”, Ohunayo pointed out.

Expectedly the National Union of Air Transport Employees (NUATE) has expressed dissatisfaction over governments plan to privatize the airports. In an exclusive chat with The Guardian, NUATE’s Acting General Secretary, Olayinka Abioye noted that privatization would have been a good thing if it is set out the way it should be done. According to him, “You cannot come and privatize Murtala Muhammed Airport  (MMA) which is our golden egg, because it is MMA that is taking care of all other airports. The government should privatize the seventeen other airports in Nigeria that seem not to be viable. The privatization of the other airports should be done with due diligence. We do not want a case where they will sell the airports to their friends and think it is business as usual.